When close to half the companies in the United States have price-to-earnings ratios (or "P/E's") below 19x, you may consider F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) as a stock to potentially avoid with its 26.6x P/E ratio. Nonetheless, we'd need to dig a little deeper to determine if there is a rational basis for the elevated P/E.

With earnings growth that's superior to most other companies of late, F5 has been doing relatively well. It seems that many are expecting the strong earnings performance to persist, which has raised the P/E. You'd really hope so, otherwise you're paying a pretty hefty price for no particular reason.

Check out our latest analysis for F5

Keen to find out how analysts think F5's future stacks up against the industry? In that case, our free report is a great place to start.

Is There Enough Growth For F5?

F5's P/E ratio would be typical for a company that's expected to deliver solid growth, and importantly, perform better than the market.

Retrospectively, the last year delivered an exceptional 46% gain to the company's bottom line. The strong recent performance means it was also able to grow EPS by 77% in total over the last three years. Therefore, it's fair to say the earnings growth recently has been superb for the company.

Shifting to the future, estimates from the analysts covering the company suggest earnings should grow by 12% per annum over the next three years. That's shaping up to be similar to the 11% each year growth forecast for the broader market.

With this information, we find it interesting that F5 is trading at a high P/E compared to the market. It seems most investors are ignoring the fairly average growth expectations and are willing to pay up for exposure to the stock. Although, additional gains will be difficult to achieve as this level of earnings growth is likely to weigh down the share price eventually.

The Key Takeaway

Typically, we'd caution against reading too much into price-to-earnings ratios when settling on investment decisions, though it can reveal plenty about what other market participants think about the company.

Our examination of F5's analyst forecasts revealed that its market-matching earnings outlook isn't impacting its high P/E as much as we would have predicted. When we see an average earnings outlook with market-like growth, we suspect the share price is at risk of declining, sending the high P/E lower. This places shareholders' investments at risk and potential investors in danger of paying an unnecessary premium.

Many other vital risk factors can be found on the company's balance sheet. Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis for F5 with six simple checks on some of these key factors.

If P/E ratios interest you, you may wish to see this free collection of other companies with strong earnings growth and low P/E ratios.

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